Nero

Nero (15 December 37 AD-9 June 68 AD) was the Emperor of the Roman Empire from 54 AD to 68 AD, succeeding Cladius and preceding Galba. He became a controversial figure, with Tacitus and Cassius Dio accusing him of a slew of atrocities: they say that he ordered his first wife Octavia kiled; kicked his second wife Poppaea to death when she was pregnant; saw to the murder of his mother Agrippina the Younger after sleeping with her; murdering his stepbrother Britannicus; instructing his mentor Seneca to commit suicide; castrated and then married a teenage boy; presided over the wholesale arson of Rome in 64 AD and then shifted the blame to a host of Christians (including saints Peter and Paul), who were rounded up and beheaded or crucified and set aflame so as to illuminate over an imperial festival; playing the fiddle while Rome burnt; and killing thousands of Christians.

However, these lies were fabricated by his biographers, who were loyal to the elite Senate. In fact, he built a public gymnasium, an amphitheater, a meat market, proposed a canal that would connect Naples to Ostia; he also soaked the rich with property taxes, extracted heavy fines from the rich rather than the poor; his mother Agrippina was mad at her loss of influence and planned to install Britannicus as the new emperor. Seneca was involved in a plot to kill Nero, so Nero killed his mother, stepbrother, and consigliere. He also killed only a few Christians, as thousands were killed in the years after his reign ended. In 68 AD Gaius Julius Vindex and Servius Suplicius Galba rose up with Spanish and French legionnaries and although Vindex died in the Battle of Vesontio in May at the hands of Lucius Verginius Rufus, Nero was tracked down by rebel cavalry. He had his comrade Tiberius Claudius Epaphroditus kill him, and his last words were "what an artist dies in me". Nero died shortly after the cavalrymen found him, the cavalry being too late to capture him.

Today, he is honored by Mayor Bruschini of Anzio, the hometown of Nero (formerly called "Antium"), who believes that Nero was a good man despite his accusations.